Credit Card Fraud – DRI*ELEMENT5.COM
Update: If any of this has happened to you, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page and let me know which state you live in, this seems to be happening especially to people who have paid traffic fines in NYC.
I had the unfortunate experience of having a fraudulent transaction posted to my Visa Debit Card this week. To make a very long story very short, someone, somehow gathered my details, including my credit card number, expiry etc and my billing address. They then used this information to purchase a software license online.
Luckily I pay close attention to my bank statements and picked this up while the amount was still “pending”. Unfortunately at this stage banks can’t do anything about the payments. But I did contact the merchant directly.
DRI*ELEMENT5.COM was the indicator on my account, and having visited their website it was apparent that they get a lot of queries such as mine, considering that their customer service page is entirely a form to look up orders (with email address and last 5 digits of the credit card used). I checked just in case, with multiple email addresses as I have a tendency to do a lot of online shopping.
It turns out that Element5.com is part of Digital River. They are essentially providers of e-commerce to various clients, predominantly software developers. While I cannot and do not blame the merchant at all, it does seem that they fall into one of those categories where a lot of fraud could occur due to the intangible product that does not need to be physically delivered.
If by chance you need to contact them, ELEMENT5.com’s phone number is 1800 406 4966. They were friendly about it all, confirmed that it definitely was not me that made the purchase and reversed the charges. What is interesting is that whoever used my card also created an email address with my name in it. They would not tell me what that email was, but just that it contained my full name – so they really tried to make the best of it.
So my card has been cancelled and I now have to visit a branch with ID’s and all the fun procedures just to draw cash, but at least they can’t use that number anymore. It does worry me that they managed to gather all of my information, though.
Three possible scenarios so far:
1) Someone, maybe at a restaurant who physically had my card tracked down my address somehow and used my details. But this is unlikely.
2) Someone who I have bought with in the past had their data compromised and they had stupidly stored all my details.
3) The most likely is that a recent transaction was handled insecurely and someone along the way had picked up my details. In fact, I paid that parking ticket just a few hours before the fraudulent transaction and they had picked a product which was a very similar price ($2 difference).
Either way, I feel highly violated.
Update:
A lot of people have been mentioning that they are contacting their credit card company, while I went the route of contacting the biller.
Here’s the difference. If you contact your credit card company they will open a case of fraud. You will probably never hear anything back from them but they will reverse your charges.
If you contact the company directly, they will refund you almost immediately but you NOT be able to file for fraud with your credit card company as well.
So the choice is yours.
This happened to me recently too. Everything i do online and the computer i do it securely and somehow someone got my credit card details (Card i only use online) and got kaspersky membership and a EA game from DRI (digital river). I checked my online statement the day before and there was nothing wrong. Next day i get a call from my cc company and they asked me if i made these charges and i was confused to how the hell someone got my cc info. Im from the USA (NJ).
Just got a 39.95 charge to my MC. I’m from Sask. Canada ARGHHHHHHH!!!!
I just received a charge from DRI KASPERSKY LAB in pending status on my visa bank card. I live in MA.
I just got 5 pending charges on 11/10/09 starting @ 5:33 am 1&2) charge.ncsoft for $54.11 2x one at 5:33 and at 5:36 am. 3) 43.94 from a TMA*AFFILNAME at 5:39 am 4) 89.95 for DRI*KASPERSKY @ 5:41 AM 5) 75.12 TO DRI*SYMANTEC @ 5:43 AM.
I just noticed a charge of $59.95 from “DRI KASPERSKY LAB” on my account and contacted my bank. They said they couldn’t do anything about it since it was a “pending” charge, so I tried to contact the company directly. That led me to Googling the company’s name to try to find their contact information.
What an freaking scam! The first five web pages that come up are consumer complaints and credit card fraud pages detailing various charges on unsuspecting consumers. I finally found the number for DRI and called them at 951-253-1234. The customer service rep said somebody with the email address “jennygarza78341@gmail.com” placed this order. I’ve never heard of any such person, but they apparently also know my old mailing address (and NOT my billing address, I might add). They also somehow got a hold of my credit card number and expiration date.
It would seem that DRI needs to step up their credit card verification process. For example, how about actually verifying someone’s CORRECT billing address before authorizing a charge. Also, they have security codes on credit cards for a reason. What’s wrong with asking for them before processing an order? It seems like these easy steps would have saved us all a lot of hardship. Unless, of course, the employees of the company are actually the ones perpetrating these schemes.
Well, looks like I’m changing all of my credit cards again. Fuck all of these people.
Just happened to me too – and I live in the UK. Last bought software from them nearly a year ago and a fake transaction appeared on my credit card last month for £$225 for some DVD software. Credit card company provided me with details (provided by Digital River) where only the address and credit card number was correct – IP address, email, phone etc were all fake. Still in dispute with credit card company to get this sorted but I am surprised the credit card companies havent blacklisted them by now.
I’m having the same problem. They really stuck it to me tho…over $500 in charges. Most of it came from Affilname some software company, kaspersky, symantac, and even mobileme (apple). And it just HAPPENED to be on my payday. How curious…and now none of their customer support representatives are available because it’s Saturday evening. By the time Monday rolls around I’m sure that these charges will no longer be in a “pending” status and I’ll have to have my bank do their time consuming fraud investigation. In the spirit of McDonalds, “I’m Lovin’ It!!!”
I just checked my checking balance online tonight and I had 2 charges for $29.95 posting on 11/11/09.
I HAVE JUST RECIEVED $70.52 ON MY HSBC CREDIT CARD AND A $1.41 OVERSEAS TRANSACTION CHARGE
FOR THE SAME TRANSACTION.MY CASE IS VERY UNIQUE.I USE PAYPAL ON EBAY OFTEN,THIS HAS NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM.NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER HAD ALL MY DETAILS.EXCEPT RECENTLY I HAVE SPOKEN
WITH HSBC CREDIT CARDS CALL CENTRE.I HAD TO “CONFIRM” ALL MY DETAILS WITH THE SLIMEY PERSON
FROM THE MALAYSIAN CALL CENTRE.MY CREDIT CARD ACCESS CODE,DATE OF BIRTH,CARD LIMIT,FULL
ADRESS,MOTHERS MAIDEN NAME.THEN 7-10 DAYS LATER I RECIEVE THESE CHARGES.
I HAVE SPOKEN TO HSBC.IT IS ONLY POSSIBLE TO GET THE SAME CALL CENTRE STAFF.THEY DON,T SEAM
TO BE ABLE TO HELP.THEY OBVIOUSLY KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEIR STAFF ARE UP TO.
WHEN I SIGNED THE PRIVACY ACT FORMS WITH HSBC I DON,T REMEMBER SIGNING TO SAY MY PERSONAL INFORMATION COULD BE PASSED ON TO OVERSEAS CALL CENTRES.
I AM GOING TO PERSUE THIS WITH HSBC TO HAVE THE MONEY CREDITTED.THEN I AM GOING TO CHANGE
TO ANOTHER CREDIT CARD COMPANY.WHEN I SIGN THE PRIVACY FORMS I AM GOING TO WRITE CLEARLY ON
THE FORM THAT MY PERSONAL INFORMATION IS NOT TO BE PASSED ON TO COMPANIES THAT OPERATE OUTSIDE AUSTRALIA.
HSBC CAN KEEP THERE CREDIT CARDS.
My credit card has been charged without my authorization someone stole my credit card number and has been charging all this online stuff on it. It seems as though there is not way to protect yourself from this.
Charge for 11/15/2009 VISA – DRI KASPERSKY.COM $159.90. I never authorized this, trust me, my bank doesn’t play games, they will nab these guys.
Got a $29.95 charge on my card to be processed on 11/16/09. This is a brand new card too (less than 1 month old). What a pain in the a$$!!!! It’s a local bank card, but I barely use it. Going to call the biller (thanks for providing the #)
So I just got off the phone with the customer service line on the other end. Turns out this is a company that bills for Spyware Doctor, which I had set to auto renew (even though I don’t usually do that). They reversed the charge and will credit in 5-7 business days. You may want to check for auto renewal PC subscriptions if you received this charge.
I used my business card Friday and after purchasing a CUNA produce via PayPal 5 charges between DRI NVIDA and TMA Affilname Gamename. I was able to get DRI NVIDA’s canceled before the product was downloaded and I will be receiving credit with in 5 to 7 days. But I can’t find information on TMA Affilname. the email associated with the charges is as follows, OUAKRIMIELHOUSSINE@mail.com I will be contacting PayPal.
Had 2 charges on my debit card which are pending. One for around $64 and the other around $149. I called the company and they were able to take one of them off. I have to wait and see if the other one gets posted for me to make a claim at my bank.
on Nov 18, 2009 received 2 charges on my debit card from DRIKASPERSKY.COM…COMPLETELY FRAUDULENT. Have contacted my bank and filed fraud complaint. Will contact NY State Attorney General’s office as well. I live in NY.
It happend to me today and i live in California. This is really upsetting and annoying. there has been several charges on my account.
same here and I live in pittsburgh
DRI*ELEMENT5.COM
TMA*AFFILNAME,GAME
CHARGE.NCSOFT.COM
It happened to me today
digital river charged 163.94 &ncsoft.com charged 49.99 & apple mobile me $1.13 it’s pending & everyone is giving me the runarounds. I live in North Carolina so everyone be careful what you do online or who you give your card number to
I was charged $71.47 by DRI Kaspersky in Sept.2009. I called CC company and they refunded the $71.47. Today Nov. 29th my CC company sent a letter saying they re-billed me because the company sent in an order summary. It is so blurred that I can’t even read it with a magnifying glass. I can sort of see that the email address is not mine as it ends in gmail.com. I took pictures of some of the above comments and along with my take on this subject I’ll send a letter to the CC company in hopes I get another refund. I never download anything unless I know the company. I never have heard of Kaspersky and have my own free virus protection. I’ll call them however on Monday using the 951-253-1234 number. Hope I get a human on the line.
I myself was hit on Thanksgiving morning. Went to use my debit card, and it was already frozen by my bank. Saw online that I was hit with 5 different charges totalling $270. Two of them appear to be Digital River (Kapersky and Symantec both), one from TMA (415-255-3131) and two from NCSOFT.COM (sells game time for an online game known as Guild Wars).
My problem comes in with trying to figure out where they got my debit card information. I do not use a wireless connection to download anything.. but heck, they could have had my card information from 6 months ago and just waited until the Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend to use it because they figure a lot of people have extra money in their accounts to go holiday shopping.
I’m just looking forward to my bank nailing those idiots to the wall.
14.95 euro in belgium
i just got hit today, someone used my CC number to purchase from here and symantec , a total of 10 charges on my card less than 24 hours. i live in Arizona. thoughts,
1) someone is stealing our CC info over the internet. possibly from a website that stores or CC information. International?
2) the make simialr purchases on line with our CC numbers,,?? hmm
3) try to think of a web site we might be using that stores or CC information and why they would use it to make purchases from the same places.
4) wondering if any of you that have been hit like this use international sites, like xoom or lj. can not think of any new accounts that i have set up recently.
don’t know about the rest of you , but i am pissed as hell and hope the banks nail their asses.
Today I was just hit with 2 Mobileme charges, 2 ncsoft.com charges, affilname charge, dir kaspersky charge and a dri symantec charge. All totalling over $400.00. I called the apple store to get help and I had the worst person that told me basically to go online and make a account and then dispute it! I could not believe it! This needs to be stopped! I have not ordered anything online in over 6 months! But someone is getting our information! I live just outside of Chicago.
I’m in S.W. Michigan and just got hit with charges totalling $388.68 from the following:
APL MobileME
TMA AFFILNAME,GAMENA
NCSOFT.COM
DRI SYMANTEC
DRI KASPERSKY.COM
This sucks, especially so close to the holidays!!
Just saw charge from October on my Capital One card. It was reversed not of my doing.
Will have to check other cards and cancel this one. Looks like a big scam out there.
I got 6 charges ranging from 43.94 to 90.90 just this morning and all of the ones mentioned here are included.
Yep me too I got hit for over three hundred dollars from dri kaspersky you can reach them at 866-525-9094 NCsoft you can reach them at 512-498-4000 Try media aka TMA affilname you can reach them at 415-255-3131 and finally napster got them thru the internet and all of this happened to me right when my power and gas was about to take out and this has wiped out my account
4m Pa! I had over $350 takin’ 4m my debit card all in one day: DRI SYMANTEC, DRI KASPERSKY COM, TMA AFFILNAME GAMENA and 2 charges 4 NCSOFT COM.I don’t know how they got my card info since I neva’ buy anything online. NCSOFT (512-498-4000)had a busy signal all day . Tha’ bank gave me another number 2 call: 1-866-367-9516. I’ve been on hold for over 1 hr. and I’m still waiting. Tha’ bank told me that I have 2 dispute these charges wit’ tha’ company cuz they aren’t gonna do anything about it. Happy Holidays!
DRI KASPERSKY COM and DRI SYMANTEC work 2gther. Call there billing dep. at: 1(877)232-4588. They gave me a full refund. NCSOFT COM also gave me a refund; again there # is 1(866-367-9516. I will have 2 try calling TMA affilname 2morrow between 9-5pm. Jeremy H.! Thank u 4 tha’ numbers that u provided. They helped me get to tha’ rite customer support… Hope this helps. I will bring all comments on this page to tha’ police department 2morrow 2 C if they can help stop this CC fraud.
Dec 04 -08 I have the following charges to my debit card also mobileme 1.13 and NCsoft 49.99 twice and DRI symantec 59.99 and dri Kaspersky.com 99.90 affilname.gamename 53.94 twice
Kaspersky is Russian software developer and Element5 and Digital River are one in the same. A few month ago I received a CD from Kaspersky. After contacting Digital River/Element5, they reversed the charges. Has anyone bought anything from USAUTOLIGHTING.COM? This company is a scam that is run by a Russian and the card that was used was the same one that was used to charge Kaspersky software. The are located in West Sacramento,Ca.
Happened to me too, and I live in Virginia. The cc company (Chase) called & emailed me and I said it was a fraudulent purchase. Card had to be canceled, an inconvenience especially at this time of the year. Chase is obviously suspicious of DRI*KASPERSKY.COM otherwise they wouldn’t have called me.
Nancy K, I got hit by the same exact charges??? It makes no sense.
Just saw a charge for $29.95 from DRI.Elements on my debit card. Will be calling the bank 1st thing in the morning. Live in Indiana.
Same thing happened to me. I purchased something on EBAY and now I found this charge of 29.95 on my DEBIT card.. but i used my Credit card to purchase online. I am worried that they will use more than just my debit account. I live in NC.
Just found a fraudulent charge on my account today. TMA*AFFILNAME,GAMENAM
$63.94 Charged to my visa. Luckily I caught it while it was still pending and I contacted TMA @ (415-255-3131) and they were very friendly. They told me that the transaction actually declined and that the pending transaction would drop off from my account. Funny thing about it is that I had National City which was bought out by PNC Bank. I got a new card and new account numbers to go with it from PNC. The person that stole my card only got my OLD National City card which went inactive as of December 9th. The transaction was posted on December 8th. No clue where this person got my OLD card but I haven’t used it in at least 40 days. I live in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Yes the same has happened to me, i was getting e mails saying about a renewal for symantec something that i have not got, they have managed to get my cc details and take £57.41 out of my bank account, iv reported this to halifax fraud. Andy uk.
this happen to me in killeen, tx
Some of the credit card theft reported here is probably due to the use of RFID cards. Check your cards for the RFID logo (little curved lines going from small to large). Merchant machines that can read RFID cards are only sensitive to about 6 inches. However, RFID enabled cards (Credit, Debit, Gift) broadcast a signal that can be read up to 30 feet away. Search eBay or Google for “RFID Protection” to find little sleeves that will block thieves from reading your info off your card as you walk along the street. There was a big story on our local news about restaurant employees that use “sniffers” to grab all your data and then sell it to scammers. Rule #1 – NEVER let your credit card out of your sight. If a vendor moves your card below the counter where you cannot see it, grab their arm and take your card back. Restaurants are a MAJOR source of credit card fraud. Not the owner, usually, but the employees. ALWAYS use CASH ONLY in a restaurant. Got this info at a seminar put on by the local Secret Service office.
Happened to me in Northern CA
This just happened to me today in the amount of 29.95 I am in Bronx, NYC
same thing to me, it was tied into a website i just ordered a book from called a1books.com STAY AWAY PEOPLE…
charged me 3 times yesterday – over $130.00 in charges – had to cancel my debit card – i’m in central Ca
I am in the Twin Cities in MN. I was charged 322.16 from DRI*DR Kaspersky Element5 on the 17th of this month. My husband and I are going to have to cancel this credit card account now – which means changing all of our bills that are paid automatically with the credit card. What a royal pain!
Got nailed with a $79.00 charge from DRI Element5 on 10/27. Can’t figure out where scammers got my information as I rarely use the card. I’m in Wisconsin.
just got hit with 2 charges from tma affilname… each one was for $63.94… no idea where the fraudulent activity initiated. got another one from best buy, another from “business tools lake dallas texas” and one from itunes… someone went on a shopping spree of nearly $300!
i called tma affilname at 415-255-3131 (thanks josh!!) and they had already flagged it as fraud. they said it was a pre authorization and would fall off automatically. so it looks like they’re a good company. someone just compromised my card. i despise frauds!
I just got hit with two Digital River charges today, each for $114.41. The charges came in as:
CHKCARDDIGITAL RIVER ILUXEMBO LUGB
CHKCARDDIGITAL RIVER LUXEMBU LUSE
We’ve gotta get these guys…
I just got hit with 2 charges for $116.67 for CHKCARDDIGITAL RIVER ILUXEMBRO LUGB & CHCKCARDDIGITAL RIVER LUXEMBU LUSE. I’m out here in N. California. Don’t have any idea what they are for or how anybody got my info.
Went online to pay my bill and noticed $54 from DRI*WWW.ELEMENT5.INFO on Nov 25. I knew I never made this charge and when I googled it – wow, was I surprised to see all the fraud reported. I live in CA and my husband had 4 fraudulent charges on one of his cards [not the same as mine] last month from the same company. He had to cancel his card.